[Help] Mecool BB2 Pro 2017 (S912, 3GB RAM) – Armbian doesn’t boot, device goes straight to Android

[Shadow13696]

Hi everyone,

I’m trying to run Armbian on my old Mecool BB2 Pro TV box but I can’t get it to boot at all – the device always goes straight into Android.

 

Device specs:

• Model: Mecool BB2 Pro
• CPU: Amlogic S912 (octa-core Cortex-A53)
• GPU: ARM Mali-T820MP3
• RAM: 3GB DDR3
• eMMC: 16GB
• Connectivity: 2× USB, HDMI, AV, SPDIF, Ethernet Gigabit
• Wi-Fi/Bluetooth: (chip unknown, maybe AP6255)

What I tried so far:

• Burned several Armbian images with Etcher and DD in Linux.
• Tried both SD card and USB stick.
• Tested multiple DTBs: gxm_q200_3g, gxm_q201_3g, p212_3g, and some generic ones.
• Formatted SD card partition as FAT16 as suggested in some guides.
• Flashed u-boot.bin manually using dd with byte skipping (e.g. bs=1 skip=444 seek=444 conv=fsync).
• CoreELEC partially boots, so the box can boot from external media.
• With Armbian, however, it never even attempts to boot – it just goes straight into Android.

What I’m looking for:

• Confirmation if Armbian can run on this device at all.
• Which DTB (if any) is recommended for this specific model.
• Any tips for debugging why Armbian is skipped but CoreELEC boots.
• If anyone has managed to run Armbian on this box, I’d really appreciate your guidance.
• Thanks in advance!

[SteeMan]

Read the instructions from this site.  It will tell you that if you have ever booted another os like coreelec, you will have made your box incompatible with the Armbian build.  

[Shadow13696]

Thank you for replying so fast, really appreciate it. No factory reset will solve this?

 

Best regards and thanks again

[Shadow13696]

Update:
I managed to brick my box to a dead Android screen. Then got it upgraded to Android 7.1.1 cause I finally found an image. Booted armbian and it gets all the way to log in screen using the meson-gxm-s912-mecool-bb2-pro.dtb but it doesn't detect anything on the USB ports with a "debounce" error on both of them and seems that the nic is up but I don't see the box in my DHCP server.

 

Any advice is greatly appreciated

Best regards

[SteeMan]

4 minutes ago, Shadow13696 said:

meson-gxm-s912-mecool-bb2-pro.dtb

What download are you using? There is no meson-gxm-s912-mecool-bb2-pro.dtb in Armbian builds.

[Shadow13696]

Sorry, bad copy-paste, using meson-gxl-s905x-p212.dtb USB ports don't work.

 

Changed to meson-gxm-q201.dtb USB ports work, managed to get to desktop but no wired network. I see the port up but it tells me the cable is disconnected.

 

Going to try meson-gxm-s912-libretech-pc.dtb and see how it goes.

 

I just want to say, thank you SteeMan, thanks to your post and your instructions, I might be able to use this old box for something useful.

[Shadow13696]

Ok, figured it out

My first mistake was not copying the proper u-boot file to the /boot folder cause the folder didn't exist when I flashed it with Balena

Second, this box has a weird set of hardware that had issues with CoreELEC and even the Official Android upgrade, hence bricking into the Android dead robot and allowing me to force an upgrade with the official Android that fixed the partitions so I could run Armbian

Third, the correct DTB for this box was meson-gxm-q200.dtb that makes everything works (attached a hw info file for future references)

As of the moment, the Armbian is working perfectly. SSH works and it's displaying everything correctly. Not going to mess with Wi-Fi cause I don't really care about it.

 

Again, thank you so much SteeMan for the help, the instructions and everything. I'll upload the hw_info and the URL for both "official" Android 7.1.1 upgrades (PC and SD flash images) for anyone to find cause it took me around a week to find those.

 

Official MeCool BB2 Pro Android: https://www.geekbuying.com/geekgiz/2018/06/mecool-bb2-pro-s912-3gb16gb-tv-box-firmware-update-20180202/?admitad_uid=b4ee2a23c13552c70bd97fdfc0371b76&utm_source=4pda.ru&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ilia

hw_info.log